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Politifact listed a number of points of inaccuracy and contention - largely criticizing the president for not providing context to remarks or for taking credit for per-existing policy points.
The Center for American Progress claimed that he made 51 incorrect statements, crowdsourcing factcheckers in a Google doc:

The full document (which cannot be edited), a copy of which is embedded below, can be accessed here.

Donald Trump also claimed during his address:
Ninety-four million Americans are out of the labor force.

As Donald Trump should know, this figure encompasses the number of Americans older than 15 who do not have jobs.

It includes students in high school or college education, disabled people, stay-at-home parents and retirees and pensioners, all of whom are unlikely to be looking for immediate work.

The number is a different statistic to the 7.6 million who were unemployed in January, yet Donald Trump used it in the following context:
Tonight, as I outline the next steps we must take as a country, we must honestly acknowledge the circumstances we inherited.

Ninety-four million Americans are out of the labor force.

Over 43 million people are now living in poverty, and over 43 million Americans are on food stamps.

Donald Trump takes credit for companies' investments that began before he became President

He is clearly trying to paint the picture of a country with a poor employment record and with poor economic circumstances. To disregard the unemployment figures and use out of work figures instead, is misleading - unless of course his intention is to abolish higher education, the retirement age and force all heavily disabled people to work.

Muhammad Ali's son reportedly detained under Trump's travel ban: 'Where did you get your name from? Are you Muslim?'

Mr Ali was born in Philadelphia and holds a US passport.

2/25/2017

The son of boxing legend Muhammad Ali was detained by immigration staff at a Florida airport, who repeatedly asked him "Are you Muslim?", a lawyer has said.

Chris Mancini told the Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky, that the incident happened as Muhammad Ali, 44, and his mother Khalilah Camacho-Ali, the second wife of the late Ali, were arriving at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on February 7 from Jamaica.

Mr Mancini says officials questioned Mr Ali for nearly two hours, repeatedly asking him, "Where did you get your name from?" and "Are you Muslim?"

The officials continued questioning Mr Ali after acknowledging that he was Muslim, Mr Mancini said.

Mr Ali was born in Philadelphia and holds a US passport.

US Customs and Border Protection said it "cannot discuss individual travellers; however, all international travellers arriving in the US are subject to CBP inspection".

Donald Trump's new 'Muslim ban' will have 'same outcome' as old one, says senior White House adviser

The new plans only have 'minor technical differences' to the US leader's original executive order that was thrown out by the courts

Donald Trump’s revised travel ban would “have the same basic policy outcome” as the initial version, according to a senior White House adviser.

Stephen Miller said the new order would be “responsive to the judicial ruling” that blocked the original order, adding that it would contain “minor technical differences” to the original directive.

“Fundamentally you’re going to have the same basic policy outcome for the country,” he told Fox News.

His comments appear to indicate that the new order would once again bar travel to the US for citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries – Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan and Libya.

The original order prompted widespread confusion and sparked mass protests.

Mr Miller – who played a key role in the initial drafting of it – also insisted that US court rulings which halted the original order were “flawed” and “erroneous” and that Mr Trump's action was “clearly legal and constitutional.”

The Court of Appeal suggested the order be redrafted so it did not risk violating the US constitution, which forbids discrimination on the grounds of religion.

Mr Miller has previously said the President would not back down to the courts on his “extreme vetting” policy.

The new executive order is reportedly expected to make clear that green card holders – immigrants with an indefinite right to live in the US – are exempt from the ban.

"The President is contemplating releasing a tighter, more streamlined version of the first executive order," Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said at the Munich Security Conference at the weekend.

He added that officials are working on a "phase in" period to help avoid confusion at airports seen after Mr Trump's first immigration directive.

WASHINGTON — President Trump has directed his administration to enforce the nation’s immigration laws more aggressively, unleashing the full force of the federal government to find, arrest and deport those in the country illegally, regardless of whether they have committed serious crimes.

Documents released on Tuesday by the Department of Homeland Security revealed the broad scope of the president’s ambitions: to publicize crimes by undocumented immigrants; strip such immigrants of privacy protections; enlist local police officers as enforcers; erect new detention facilities; discourage asylum seekers; and, ultimately, speed up deportations.

The new enforcement policies put into practice language that Mr. Trump used on the campaign trail, vastly expanding the definition of “criminal aliens” and warning that such unauthorized immigrants “routinely victimize Americans,” disregard the “rule of law and pose a threat” to people in communities across the United States.

Despite those assertions in the new documents, research shows lower levels of crime among immigrants than among native-born Americans.
Continue reading the main story

The president’s new immigration policies are likely to be welcomed by some law enforcement officials around the country, who have called for a tougher crackdown on unauthorized immigrants, and by some Republicans in Congress who have argued that lax enforcement encourages a never-ending flow of unauthorized immigrants.

But taken together, the new policies are a rejection of the sometimes more restrained efforts by former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush and their predecessors, who sought to balance protecting the nation’s borders with fiscal, logistical and humanitarian limits on the exercise of laws passed by Congress.

“The faithful execution of our immigration laws is best achieved by using all these statutory authorities to the greatest extent practicable,” John F. Kelly, the secretary of homeland security, wrote in one of two memorandums released on Tuesday. “Accordingly, department personnel shall make full use of these authorities.”

The immediate impact of that shift is not yet fully known. Advocates for immigrants warned on Tuesday that the new border control and enforcement directives would create an atmosphere of fear that was likely to drive those in the country illegally deeper into the shadows.

Administration officials said some of the new policies — like one seeking to send unauthorized border crossers from Central America to Mexico while they await deportation hearings — could take months to put in effect and might be limited in scope.

For now, so-called Dreamers, who were brought to the United States as young children, will not be targeted unless they commit crimes, officials said on Tuesday.

Mr. Trump has not yet said where he will get the billions of dollars needed to pay for thousands of new border control agents, a network of detention facilities to detain unauthorized immigrants and a wall along the entire southern border with Mexico.

But politically, Mr. Kelly’s actions on Tuesday serve to reinforce the president’s standing among a core constituency — those who blame unauthorized immigrants for taking jobs away from citizens, committing heinous crimes and being a financial burden on federal, state and local governments.

And because of the changes, millions of immigrants in the country illegally now face a far greater likelihood of being discovered, arrested and eventually deported.

“The message is: The immigration law is back in business,” said Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports restricted immigration. “That violating immigration law is no longer a secondary offense.”

Lawyers and advocates for immigrants said the new policies could still be challenged in court. Maricopa County in Arizona spent years defending its sheriff at the time, Joseph Arpaio, in federal court, where he was found to have discriminated against Latinos.

And courts in Illinois, Oregon, Pennsylvania and several other states have rejected the power given to local and state law enforcement officers to hold immigrants for up to 48 hours beyond their scheduled release from detention at the request of federal authorities under a program known as Secure Communities, which Mr. Trump is reviving.

“When you tell state and local police that their job is to do immigration enforcement,” said Omar Jadwat, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, “it translates into the unwarranted and illegal targeting of people because of their race, because of their language, because of the color of their skin.”

Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, said on Tuesday that the president wanted to “take the shackles off” of the nation’s immigration enforcers. He insisted that the new policies made it clear that “the No. 1 priority is that people who pose a threat to our country are immediately dealt with.”

In fact, that was already the policy under the Obama administration, which instructed agents that undocumented immigrants convicted of serious crimes were the priority for deportation. Now, enforcement officials have been directed to seek the deportation of anyone in the country illegally.

“Under this executive order, ICE will not exempt classes or categories of removal aliens from potential enforcement,” a fact sheet released by the Department of Homeland Security said, using the acronym for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “All of those present in violation of the immigration laws may be subject to immigration arrest, detention, and, if found removable by final order, removal from the United States.”

That includes people convicted of fraud in any official matter before a governmental agency and people who “have abused any program related to receipt of public benefits.”

The policy also expands a program that lets officials bypass due process protections such as court hearings in some deportation cases.

Under the Obama administration, the program, known as “expedited removal,” was used only when an immigrant was arrested within 100 miles of the border and had been in the country no more than 14 days. Now it will include all those who have been in the country for up to two years, no matter where they are caught.

“The administration seems to be putting its foot down as far as the gas pedal will go,” said Heidi Altman, policy director for the National Immigrant Justice Center, a Chicago-based group that offers legal services to immigrants.

In the documents released on Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security is directed to begin the process of hiring 10,000 immigration and customs agents, expanding the number of detention facilities and creating an office within Immigration and Customs Enforcement to help families of those killed by undocumented immigrants.

The directives would also revive a program that recruits local police officers and sheriff’s deputies to help with deportation, effectively making them de facto immigration agents. The effort, called the 287(g) program, was scaled back during the Obama administration.

The program faces resistance from many states and dozens of so-called sanctuary cities, which have refused to allow their law enforcement workers to help round up undocumented individuals. In New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio in a statement on Tuesday pledged the city’s cooperation in cases involving “proven public safety threats,” but vowed that “what we will not do is turn our N.Y.P.D. officers into immigration agents.”

Under the new directives, the agency would no longer provide privacy protections to people who are not American citizens or green card holders. A policy established in the last days of the Bush administration in January 2009 provided some legal protection for information collected by the Department of Homeland Security on nonresidents.

The new policies also target unauthorized immigrants who smuggle their children into the country, as happened with Central American children seeking to reunite with parents living in the United States. Under the new directives, such parents could face deportation or prosecution for smuggling or human trafficking.

Officials said that returning Central American refugees to Mexico to await hearings would be done only in a limited fashion, and only after discussions with the government of Mexico.

Mexican officials said on Tuesday that such a move could violate Mexican law and international accords governing repatriation, and immigrants’ advocates questioned Mexico’s ability to absorb thousands of Central Americans in detention centers and shelters.

It might emerge that the man had mental problems. There are reports that he was alcoholic. There's no direct line connecting him with the ascension of Trump or his rhetoric. But there is a dotted line.

In the name of making America great again, Trump has enabled the bullies. The fulminations about terrorists, rapists, murderers, all brown, all the other, leave no one in doubt that this election was about white America taking back the country, taking a stand against the browning of America. Thankfully not everyone subscribed to this as Grillot's courage showed.

Kuchibhotla paid with his life but there have been many incidents of garden variety bullying and "go back to your country"-type harassment. And Trump's response has been tepid, delayed and deliberately measured. He takes his time to condemn anti-Semitic hate crime threats and bristles when asked about it at a press conference.

Trump will no doubt condemn Kuchibhotla's death. Republican senator from Kansas, Jerry Moran, has already said "I strongly condemn violence of any kind especially if it is motivated by prejudice and xenophobia." Trump will surely echo him as well.

There are reports that Purinton thought Kuchibhotla and Madasani were Middle Eastern. Indian Americans would do well not to think that this was a freak case of mistaken identity. After 9/11 the first casualty was Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh gas station owner "mistaken" as an Arab because of his beard and turban. In 2012 a peaceful gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, became the scene of a bloodbath when Wade Michael Page opened his semiautomatic on its congregation.

This violence was not freak or unprecedented. Page was involved with a white supremacist group and was an active member of a skinhead group called the Northern Hammerskins.

As Deepa Iyer writes in her timely book We Too Sing America: South Asian, Arab, Muslim and Sikh Immigrants Shape our Multiracial Future, "America is a racial state. We are the inheritors of systems and institutions that enable the denial of basic human rights to indigenous and Black and Brown communities, from colonization to slavery, from Jim Crow segregation to the Japanese American internment. The post-9/11 treatment of South Asian, Arab and Muslim communities by the US government continues this shameful legacy."

This violence is not isolated, no matter how much authorities will try to "lone wolf" it. It exists in a continuum. It exists within the racial anxiety of the US which is projected to become a "majority-minority" nation by 2043 which means that no one ethnic group will be the majority any more. Many of those who voted for Trump did so believing that Trump would reverse or at least slow the demographic march towards that date. The wall, the extreme vetting, the employment visa rules are all part of that project even if they are presented as measures against crime and terrorism.

Iyer writes that it's more accurate to think of America transforming into a multiracial nation with no single racial group occupying a majority, but conservative forces will see more potency in the term "majority-minority" which carries with it a sense of an old white majority under siege in their own homeland. As Iyer writes, majority-minority does not mean minority populations "will gain power and influence due to their numbers", that sheer numbers will "drive racial equality, economic equity, or political power."

The vulnerability of the minority will only increase as it is perceived as a threat to some people's idea of America, as we found in Kansas City.

What will happen now is predictable. There will be condemnation. There will be an attempt to frame this story as a lone wolf story. There will be promises of strict action. The Indian government will rush to render all assistance to the affected families. There might be a marked slowness, even reluctance to call this a hate crime in sharp contrast to the alacrity with which an attack that never happened in Sweden will be described as terror. All of that is utterly predictable.

What Indian-Americans will do well to take away from the Kansas city attack is that their complacency about being the model minority will not save them from the hate. Trump may personally bear no ill-will against them, he may have even made ads saying "Ab ki baar, Trump sarkar" and his daughter-in-law might wear a bindi and go to a temple, but for many of his angry buzzing supporters, Indian-Americans are just part of the browning of America that they resent.

All the money that the Republican Hindu Coalition raised for Trump will not be able to protect the likes of Kuchibhotla from that hate when it spills over onto Main Street America. The hate graffiti on the wall does not check visa status.

Indian Americans would do well to realise that they occupy no special place despite their median income. In fact Trump's campaign against "illegal immigrants" will also singe South Asian Americans though no one thinks of desis when they think about immigrants slipping across the US-Mexico border. But the fact is, thanks to visa overstays, South Asian Americans are one of the fastest growing "illegal" groups in the US.

The Times of India reports that some 300,000 Indians could be affected by the administration's plans to deport first and ask questions later. A Pew Center report says there were nearly half a million unauthorised Indian immigrants in the US in 2014, a 43% spike since 2009.

It just goes to show that Indian Americans do not exist in a vacuum. They are part of the immigrant story, and when the backlash happens, they will be part of that story too, as the Kansas incident tragically illustrates. Indian-Americans must be a part of the movement to resist the forces unleashed in America today, they cannot set themselves apart from it.

Sikh Man Shot At Home By White Man After 'Go Back To Your Own Country' Comment

by Cristina Silva - March 4, 2017

A 39-year-old homeowner in Washington said he was shot by an unknown man in his own neighborhood Friday because he is a Sikh man. The victim said the shooter told him to “go back to your own country,” the Seattle Times reported.

Kent police said they were searching for the gunman, described as a white man wearing a mask to cover his face, and were working with the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. The shooting was being investigated as a possible hate crime.

The victim was shot in the arm and was being treated for non-fatal injuries. He was tending to his car in his driveway around 8 p.m. when the gunman approached him.

The shooting came a week after a similar shooting in Kansas that left an Indian man dead and another wounded. Srinivas Kuchibhotla, 32, an Indian immigrant, was shot and killed by Adam Purinton, 51, at Austins Bar and Grill in Olathe, a city outside of Kansas City. Alok Madasani, 32, and bar patron Ian Grillot, 24, were injured in the shooting. Purinton apparently told the two Indian men to “get out of my country.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center has sought to link a rise in hate crimes to President Donald Trump. There were 1,094 bias incidents reported in the first 34 days after the election, according to a count by the Southern Poverty Law Center. "The hate was clearly tied directly to Trump’s victory. The highest count came on the first day after the election, with the numbers diminishing steadily after that. And more than a third of the incidents directly referenced either Trump," the center said in a report in February.

But race attacks are far from new in the U.S. Two men in California were charged with hate crimes last year after attacking a Sikh man and cutting off his hair, which was kept long by religious mandate. The attack occurred in September in Richmond.

The fact that the press is not reporting on the continuing violent rhetoric at Donald Trump’s rallies reflects an acceptance that is deeply troubling.

Thankfully, today the New York Times posted a video “Unfiltered: Voices from Trump’s Crowds,” that captures the tone of the language used at Trump rallies, language that often revolves around hatred and violence, and is filled with crude slurs.

What we seem to have here is a case of the normalization of the deplorable. It is a sinister sight to watch. Masses of people shout racial slurs against Hispanics and our black President, they call for the lynching of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, and they hurl anti-LGBTQ epithets.

It’s disturbing that Trump’s outrages are so frequent that the mob atmosphere at his rallies is evidently no longer terribly “newsworthy.” While Benghazi and emails remain part of everyday reporting over the months, journalists don’t remind us of Trump’s earlier incitements.

The mob outbursts and the incitements have become routine, part of the furniture — sort of like Trump’s remarkable 70-year-old hair, no longer worthy of comment. Another day, another deplorable outburst, either from the candidate or his deplorables or both.

The media has to stop taking mob violence for granted. Trump has styled himself as the only viable outlet for hatred that has been teeming under the surface for years. And the danger for the republic is evident. If outbursts of violence, as of venom, fade into the hush of background noise, the deplorables have won.

Watch the full video here (this footage includes vulgarities and racial and ethnic slurs.)

PresidentDonald Trump’s biggest supporting bloc in the country since winning the presidency last year are the same people who voted him into the Oval Office: white Americans. Meanwhile, minority demographics trailed in their approval ratings of the president, a Gallup poll released Tuesday revealed.

Above all, it was uneducated white men, usually above the age of 50, who were most likely to support Trump in his first seven weeks in Washington, D.C. Trump's overall approval rating stood at 42 percent on Wednesday since his first day in the White House, Jan. 20, according to Gallup's latest poll.

While just 13 percent of black voters supported Trump, the lowest approval of any demographic accounted for in Tuesday’s poll, a majority of white men approved of the president, with 60 percent of support among the voting group also most likely to support Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Other variables, including college education and gender, have historically played important roles in determining a president’s approval across the country as well. For example, the poll showed Trump was not so well-liked among women, minorities and college-educated voters.

Though 67 percent of white, non-college-graduate men approved of Trump’s first months as president, just 15 percent of nonwhite female college graduates said they supported the work Trump had accomplished so far. That number dipped to 14 percent for non-graduates in the same voting bloc.

Trump’s first weeks in office have been largely mired in controversy, with a focus on the new White House administration’s ties to the Russians overtaking most of the daily news Trump would prefer the media to report on instead. Meanwhile, his approval rating was on its way to breaking a record for the lowest of any American president in modern history.

By Ben Nuckols and Gene Johnson - 3/15/2017
Hours before it was to take effect, President Donald Trump's revised travel ban was put on hold Wednesday by a federal judge in Hawaii who questioned whether the administration was motivated by national security concerns.

U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson also said Hawaii would suffer financially if the executive order blocked the flow of students and tourists to the state, and he concluded that Hawaii was likely to succeed on a claim that the ban violates First Amendment protections against religious discrimination.

"The illogic of the government's contentions is palpable," Watson wrote. "The notion that one can demonstrate animus toward any group of people only by targeting all of them at once is fundamentally flawed."

The judge issued his 43-page ruling less than two hours after hearing Hawaii's request for a temporary restraining order to stop the ban from being put into practice.

"This ruling makes us look weak, which by the way we no longer are, believe me, just look at our borders," he said. "We're going to take our case as far as it needs to go including all the way up to the Supreme Court."

The ruling came as opponents renewed their legal challenges across the country, asking judges in three states to block the executive order that targets people from six predominantly Muslim countries. Federal courts in Maryland, Washington state and Hawaii heard arguments about whether it should be allowed to take effect early Thursday as scheduled.
In all, more than half a dozen states are trying to stop the ban.

Watson made it clear that his decision applied nationwide, ruling that the ban could not be enforced at any U.S. borders or ports of entry or in the issuance of visas.

Nominated to the federal bench by President Barack Obama in 2012, he is currently the only Native Hawaiian judge serving on the federal bench and the fourth in U.S. history. He received his law degree from Harvard in 1991.
In Maryland, attorneys told a federal judge that the measure still discriminates against Muslims.

Government attorneys argued that the ban was revised substantially to address legal concerns, including the removal of an exemption for religious minorities from the affected countries.

"It doesn't say anything about religion. It doesn't draw any religious distinctions," said Jeffrey Wall, who argued for the Justice Department.
Attorneys for the ACLU and other groups said that Trump's statements on the campaign trail and statements from his advisers since he took office make clear that the intent of the ban is to ban Muslims. Trump policy adviser Stephen Miller has said the revised order was designed to have "the same basic policy outcome" as the first.

The new version of the ban details more of a national security rationale. It is narrower and eases some concerns about violating the due-process rights of travelers.
It applies only to new visas from Somalia, Iran, Syria, Sudan, Libya and Yemen and temporarily shuts down the U.S. refugee program. It does not apply to travelers who already have visas.

Facing Defiance, GOP Leaders Press Ahead on Health Bill

"Generally, courts defer on national security to the government," said U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang. "Do I need to conclude that the national security purpose is a sham and false?"

In response, ACLU attorney Omar Jadwat pointed to Miller's statement and said the government had put out misleading and contradictory information about whether banning travel from six specific countries would make the nation safer.

The Maryland lawsuit also argues that it's against federal law for the Trump administration to reduce the number of refugees allowed into the United States this year by more than half, from 110,000 to 50,000. Attorneys argued that if that aspect of the ban takes effect, 60,000 people would be stranded in war-torn countries with nowhere else to go.

Chuang made no immediate ruling.

In the Hawaii case, the federal government said there was no need to issue an emergency restraining order because Hawaii officials offered only "generalized allegations" of harm.

Jeffrey Wall of the Office of the Solicitor General challenged Hawaii's claim that the order violates due-process rights of Ismail Elshikh as a U.S. citizen who wants his mother-in-law to visit his family from Syria. He says courts have not extended due-process rights outside of a spousal relationship.

Neal Katyal, a Washington, D.C., attorney representing Hawaii, called the story of Elshiskh, an Egyptian immigrant and naturalized U.S. citizen, "the story of America."

In Washington state, U.S. District Judge James Robart - who halted the original ban last month - heard arguments in a lawsuit brought by the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, which is making arguments similar to the ACLU's in the Maryland case.

Robart said he is most interested in two questions presented by the group's challenge to the ban: whether the ban violates federal immigration law, and whether the affected immigrants would be "irreparably harmed" should the ban go into effect.

He spent much of Wednesday's hearing grilling the lawyers about two seeming conflicting federal laws on immigration - one that gives the president the authority to keep "any class of aliens" out of the country, and another that forbids the government from discriminating on the basis of nationality when it comes to issuing immigrant visas.

Robart said he would issue a written order, but he did not say when. He is also overseeing the challenge brought by Washington state.
Attorney General Bob Ferguson argues that the new order harms residents, universities and businesses, especially tech companies such as Washington state-based Microsoft and Amazon, which rely on foreign workers. California, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York and Oregon have joined the claim.

The Pleasant Run Elementary students had just won a robotics challenge at Plainfield High School, and the students - new to bot competition this year - were one step closer to the Vex IQ State Championship.

The team is made up of 9- and 10-year-olds. Two are African American and three are Latino.

As the group, called the Pleasant Run PantherBots, and their parents left the challenge last month in Plainfield, Ind., competing students from other Indianapolis-area schools and their parents were waiting for them in the parking lot.
"Go back to Mexico!" two or three kids screamed at their brown-skin peers and their parents, according to some who were there.

This verbal attack had spilled over from the gymnasium. While the children were competing, one or two parents disparaged the Pleasant Run kids with racist comments - and loud enough for the Pleasant Run families to hear.

"They were pointing at us and saying that 'Oh my God, they are champions of the city all because they are Mexican. They are Mexican, and they are ruining our country,' " said Diocelina Herrera, the mother of PantherBot Angel Herrera-Sanchez.

These are minority students from the east side of the city, poor kids from a Title I school.

"For the most part, the robotics world is kind of a white world," said Lisa Hopper, the team's coach and a Pleasant Run second-grade teacher. "They're just not used to seeing a team like our kids.
"And they see us and they think we're not going to be competition. Then we're in first place the whole day, and they can't take it," she said.

Nearly 35 schools competed in the Feb. 2 robotics challenge. Plainfield High School was the host, but the participating elementary school teams came from more than 20 communities in and around Indianapolis.

Hopper said her team and their parents were unable to identify the competing students and the parent who made the comments.

Plainfield officials condemned the hurtful comments. A district spokeswoman did not know about the incident until she was contacted but said a letter would be sent to every participating school to reiterate district policies.

"We don't condone that behavior; we don't tolerate it in our schools," said Sabrina Kapp, director of communications for Plainfield Community School Corp. "We talk a lot about community values here. That is simply not something that anybody associated with Plainfield schools would put up with."

On Wednesday, Superintendent Scott Olinger of Plainfield Community Schools, released a statement:

The Plainfield Community School Corp. does not condone or tolerate language or behaviors that degrade others. Had our organizing team been made aware of the alleged behaviors by unknown adults on Feb. 2, we would have taken immediate action.

We were pleased to host such an impressive array of young students, and we were equally proud of the teamwork, camaraderie, knowledge and fun that these children displayed. To learn now that adults may have acted in a way that distracted from the success of the day is disheartening. In the Plainfield schools, such behavior is unacceptable, regardless of whether it comes from adults or students.

Three weeks after the incident, the PantherBots won the Create Award - for best robot design and engineering - at the state championships, which qualified them for the Vex IQ World Championship next month in Louisville. They will compete there with students from all over the world.

And they say they'll walk in with confidence.
"They yelled out rude comments, and I think that they can talk all they want because at the end we're still going to Worlds," said team leader Elijah Goodwin, 10. "It's not going to affect us at all. I'm not surprised because I'm used to this kind of behavior.

"When you have a really good team, people will treat you this way," he said. "And we do have a pretty good team."

Hopper said she and her co-coach, after learning of the incident in Plainfield, gathered the team to see how they were handling it.

"I was afraid they would let it get in their heads and wig them out," Hopper said. "We sat down and talked to our kids, and obviously we let them share their feelings.

"They were on top of it already," she said. "They said: 'We know they are mean. We know they were jealous. We're not going to let it bother us.' One of our guys said 'to take stuff like that and let it make you stronger.' "

Just a few months ago, the PantherBots knew nothing about robotics.

The low-income school was given a grant to develop a robotics program. Fourth-grade teachers were asked to identify 10 students who had potential and exhibited leadership qualities.

"I'm just so proud of them," Hopper said. "The great thing about these five kids is they all ended up having strengths that elevated the team. They are dynamic individuals."

Now they'll be traveling 125 miles south to a world championship April 23 to 25 that is aimed at middle school students. Their GoFundMe page already has raised $4,000 more than their $8,000 goal to get there and has stopped accepting donations.

"We are truly overwhelmed with all of the support we have received," Hopper wrote on the page. "Any additional funds will be used to help with our robotics program next year."

The can't compete intellectually or in hard work against all of these people, and so that's why they tell everyone to "go back home". It's these people who need to "go back home" to their European country they came from.

As anti-Muslim bias rises across the country, business owners that ban Muslims feel emboldened

By Harmon Leon - Apr 26, 2017

In his radio ad, Crockett Keller sounds like a kindly sheriff in a Western film. Keller is promoting a concealed-carry course he offers at his Mason, Texas, gun range. It’s family friendly, he says, and notes that all are welcome.

Well, not exactly all. “If you are a non-Christian Arab or Muslim,” he clarifies, “I will not teach you the class.”

Keller, whose radio advertisements air in this predominantly white town of 2,134 people, believes he’s devised a foolproof method to ensure Muslims don’t attend his course: “We will offer a prayer for our country and a safe class along with reciting the Pledge of Allegiance,” he says, going on to note that he does not believe in so-called political correctness. “If you don’t love and respect the United States of America, you’re in the wrong place!”

Keller’s belief — that Islam is fundamentally un-American — runs counter to the core American principle of freedom of religion. But his conception of American-ness as something white and Christian aligns with a long, shameful narrative. From the internment of Japanese-Americans during the Second World War to the “Whites only” lunch counters of the Jim Crow-era South, racial and religious exclusion has always been a part of how some Americans define themselves.

Now, in the nascent presidency of Donald Trump — a leader who’s made Islam a focal point of his stark “us vs. them” worldview — this mindset is thriving in some corners of society, including establishments like Crockett’s. “There is sort of a disturbing trend of businesses declaring themselves to be a Muslim-free zone – or declaring that they are going to decline services to people who are Muslim,” says Veronica Laizure, Civil Rights Director of the Oklahoma Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
Muslim bans are most frequently found in gun stores — “you don’t really hear of many Muslim-free bake shops or florists,” Laizure said. But anti-Muslim bias is on the rise throughout American society under Trump, she said. “Normalizing discrimination against American Muslims results in concrete acts of discrimination,” Laizure said. “We have seen increases in [discrimination] both here and nationally as a trend since the last presidential campaign.”

Gun store owners who ban Muslims typically say they do so for security reasons. (Despite the fact that you’re about six times more likely to be killed by lightning than by an Islamic [a Muslim] terrorist on American soil.) Take Jan Morgan, owner of the Gun Cave in Hot Springs, Arkansas, who insists on her website that she bans Muslims from her store for her own safety. “The Koran (which I have read and studied thoroughly) and (which muslims align themselves with), contains 109 verses commanding hate, murder and terror against all human beings who refuse to submit or convert to Islam,” she wrote. She does not mention the abundance of passages in the Koran that call for peace, and the similar excess of violence in the Bible and other religious texts.

How do store owners like Morgan figure out which customers are Muslim? Unsurprisingly, one way is racial stereotyping. When a father and son of South Asian descent entered the Gun Cave, they were told by Morgan that it was a Muslim-free shooting range, and that if they were Muslim they should leave. When the father informed Morgan that they weren’t Muslims, the woman reportedly kicked them out anyway and threatened to call the police.

So far, most store owners who refuse to serve Muslims (or anyone they believe are Muslims) haven’t faced many legal consequences. But later this year, “Muslim-free zones” — which predate the Trump era — will face a test in court. Laizure is one of the attorneys working on a federal lawsuit against Save Yourself Survival and Tactical Gun Range, a gun store in Oktaha, Oklahoma, that posted a sign declaring itself a “Muslim free establishment.” In October 2015, Muslim-American U.S. army reservist Raja’ee Fatihah visited the range and planned to use the facility. At first, the staff was friendly to Fatihah, but after he identified himself as Muslim, the gun store owners picked up handguns and asked whether he was there to “commit an act of violence or as part of a ‘jihad,’” according to a statement by the American Civil Liberties Union, which is also representing Fatihah.

“There is no justification for a business denying people service based on religion,” Fatihah said. “I am a servant of my community in every respect and as a proud American I have enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserve to protect this country. I should be afforded the same rights and privileges as anyone else.” His case goes to trial this summer.

In 2015, CAIR filed a similar lawsuit against Andy Hallinan, owner of Florida Gun Supply in Inverness, Florida, who also declared his gun store a “Muslim-free zone,” posting the proclamation in his store window.

“I care about my community. I care about my family. I want to make sure who I put a gun in front of, are not going to use it to harm somebody in my community,” Hallinan said in an interview. “Here in America we have the right to refuse business to anyone we deem a threat for any reason.”

Hallinan became notorious nationwide for his headline-making sign — as well as the Confederate flag art fundraiser he organized with another infamous Floridian, George Zimmerman. “In my opinion, how the terrorists win is they get people like me to shut up. To sit down, get afraid of lawsuits – and shut up,” Hallinan said.

The Florida chapter of CAIR argued in its federal lawsuit that Hallinan’s store policy amounted to religious discrimination and violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But the claim was later dismissed by a U.S. district judge because there wasn’t a specific plaintiff in the case; CAIR had filed the suit on behalf of its members.

As Fatihah’s day in court nears, Laizure is feeling optimistic about CAIR’s case against the Oklahoma gun range. Unlike the case against Hallinan, CAIR has a plaintiff in Fatihah “who did suffer injury from being denied the services of the establishment,” she said.

Further, Laizure says, the law is clear: While freedom of speech allows businesses to post “No Muslims” signs, these stores cross the line when they deny services. “Under Title II of the Civil Rights Act, it’s illegal to discriminate against who can use your service if you’re a place of business, based on religion or race or national origin,” she said. “That is where they violate the law.”

“It’s unfortunately similar to what we’ve historically seen with public business accommodations in the South during the 1960s that literally advertised black people weren’t allowed,” she added.

The Oklahoma gun range is being represented by the same legal counsel that represented Hallinan, the American Freedom Law Center. The firm is run by David Yerushalmi, who has made the watch list of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a legal advocacy group that monitors hate groups. His legal credentials include defending such notables as Quran-burning pastor Terry Jones. Yerushalmi once stated that “the mythical ‘moderate’ Muslim who embraces traditional Islam but wants a peaceful coexistence with the West – is effectively non-existent’ and ‘most of the fundamental differences between the races are genetic.’”

Laizure and her colleagues believe they have the law on their side in the Oklahoma case — and hope the suit will send a message to any other store owners who feel emboldened under Trump to institute their own Muslim bans.

“We’re hoping [Fatihah’s case] will show American Muslims that they have the right to be served at businesses and not to be denied service because of their religion,” Laizure said. “We’re hoping that this case will establish more religious protection for Muslim Americans under Title II. And we’re hoping that this will have implications for other establishments that have decided to declare themselves to be Muslim–free in violation of federal civil rights law.”

This is the result of U.S. politicians and Islamophobia network spreading lies about “Muslims’ no go areas” in England and France where supposedly non-Muslims aren’t allowed to go because of large Muslim population who don’t allow them there. The mayor of Paris called the US politician an idiot and even threatened to sue for the lie.

After first iftar dinner in 1805, the White House started yearly ritual in 1996, under former First Lady Hillary Clinton

By Rachael Revesz - 6/26/2017
Donald Trump's government has not held an iftar dinner for the end of Ramadan, breaking a Muslim tradition held at the White House for more than two centuries.

The iftar dinner occurs at sunset at the end of the holy month of Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islam lunar calendar and a time of prayer, reflection and fasting.

White House officials reportedly spend months planning the event, which has been held every year under the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations, but 2017 took a different path.

The White House issued a statement on late Saturday evening.

"Muslims in the United States joined those around the world during the holy month of Ramadan to focus on acts of faith and charity," the statement read. "Now, as they commemorate Eid with family and friends, they carry on the tradition of helping neighbours and breaking bread with people from all walks of life.

"During this holiday, we are reminded of the importance of mercy, compassion, and goodwill. With Muslims around the world, the United States renews our commitment to honour these values. Eid Mubarak."

Earlier this year Secretary of State Rex Tillerson reportedly said the government would not host the dinner. He also issued a statement on Saturday, which read, "This holiday marks the culmination of Ramadan, a month in which many experience meaning and inspiration in acts of fasting, prayer, and charity.

"This day offers an opportunity to reflect on our shared commitment to building peaceful and prosperous communities. Eid Mubarak."

The brief statements provide a stark contrast to the holiday message issued by former President Barack Obama, who warned against the "rise in attacks against Muslim Americans". "Muslim Americans have been part of our American family since its founding," he added.

Former President Thomas Jefferson, a staunch advocate of religious freedom, famously hosted a White House iftar in December 1805 in honour of Tunisian ambassador Sidi Soliman Mellimelli during the American conflict with what were known as the Barbary States.

"Dinner will be on the table precisely at sun-set - " the invitation read. "The favour of an answer is asked."

John Quincy Adams noted in his diaries that the dinner was served late in the evening as it was "in the midst of Ramadan".

The nature of the dinner has divided opinion over the last two centuries, with far-right critics insisting the dinner was only moved back as a "courtesy" and that the menu was not changed for the guests.

Regardless of what is served at the meal, anyone present at the dinner who is breaking their fast means an iftar is being held.
The White House tradition started with earnest in 1996, when First Lady Hillary Clinton hosted 150 people after learning more about the ritual from her daughter Chelsea, who had reportedly studied Islamic history in school, as reported by Muslim Voices.

President George W Bush hosted the dinner every year for his two terms, including just after the 9/11 attacks. He said at the dinner that the fight was against terrorism, not Islam.

American Muslims might have been hoping for the dinner to be held at the White House this year as a symbol of unity after a spike in hate crimes against the community, the highest level since 2001. Mr Trump has been strongly criticised for his proposal in December 2015 to ban Muslims from entering the US and also for his executive order as President to temporarily ban all immigration and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries. The order, later revised, was knocked down by federal courts.

Hate symbols are showing up around the country: nooses in the nation's capital, racist graffiti on the front gate of LeBron James' Los Angeles home, a banner with an anti-Semitic slur over a Holocaust memorial in Lakewood, N.J. On Saturday, the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan rallied in Charlottesville, Va., less than two months after white supremacist Richard Spencer — who coined the term "alt-right" — led a similar protest in the city against the removal of a Confederate monument. Several white nationalist groups are planning another rally for Aug. 12.

In an America where deep divisions exposed in the presidential election have only intensified in the past eight months, these incidents take on new meaning as they become more widespread.

"They're increasing not only in number but in terms of their ferocity," said Chip Berlet, a scholar of the far right.

Groups that track these incidents — including the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the non-profit news organization ProPublica, which is creating a national database of hate crimes and bias — say hate incidents are a national problem whose scope we don't fully grasp. Tracking them is notoriously difficult:

Incidents of public harassment motivated by hate bias may not meet the legal definition of a "hate crime."

While a patchwork of data means we don't have a complete picture of the problem, the SPLC and the ADL say available numbers show disturbing trends. In its most recent hate crimes report, the FBI tracked a total of 5,818 hate crimes in 2015, a rise of about 6.5% from the previous year, and showed that attacks against Muslims surged. The SPLC documented an uptick of hate and bias incidents after the presidential election, tracking 1,094 in the first month alone. The organization also says the number of hate groups in the U.S. increased for a second year in a row in 2016. In April, the ADL reported anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. rose 86% in the first quarter of 2017.

"Even though the data is incomplete, we still think it's statistically significant, and in that it's troubling to see more manifestations of prejudice than we've seen in the past," said Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the ADL.Minorities feel less safe

"People feel like they could be attacked at any moment," she said. "Often, they also don’t trust the police to help them."

While the FBI's data typically show 5,000 to 6,000 hate crimes a year, the Department of Justice's estimates are much higher. A report out this month from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, based on data from the National Crime Victimization Survey, show Americans experienced an average of 250,000 hate crime victimizations each year from 2004 to 2015. About a quarter of hate crime victims who didn't report said they feared police wouldn't be able to help them.

Us vs. Them

For years before he ran for president, Trump roused the “birther” movement that falsely questioned the legitimacy of Barack Obama, the nation’s first black president. During the presidential campaign, Trump said an Indiana-born federal judge was biased because of his "Mexican heritage." Since becoming president, Trump has taken a hard stance on immigration, instituting a travel ban on immigrants from six Muslim-majority countries, which the Supreme Court partially reinstated in late June.

Trump's ascendance, Berlet said, was built upon a narrative of "us vs. them," language that resonates with many Americans who fear cultural shifts brought on by changing demographics.

After the deadly shooting at Pulse nightclub in June 2016, then-candidate Trump said, "The Muslims have to work with us. They have to work with us. They know what's going on. They know that he was bad. They knew the people in San Bernardino were bad. But you know what? They didn't turn them in. And we had death and destruction."

"When a public figure with a high status identifies a group that is described as threatening to the stability of the community or the nation, in certain conditions this can lead people to conclude that they have to defend their way of life from these 'others,'" Berlet said. "These scapegoated or demonized others have to be either silenced or eradicated."

Trump has been repeatedly asked to do more to denounce hate associated with his name. Expressions of bigotry among his supporters were well-documented during his campaign and Trump himself has been accused by civil rights groups of using hateful and violent rhetoric, as well as being too reticent in condemning it. Just this month, Trump posted a CNN smackdown clip on Twitter that was taken from a Reddit troll who the ADL says has “a consistent record of racism, anti-Semitism and bigotry."

"It doesn’t make one racist to have voted for Trump, and I’m sure many didn’t pay that much attention to the campaign," Beirich said. "That said, Trump’s rants against Mexicans, Muslims and women were widely reported. So clearly Trump’s views on these matters weren’t disqualifying for many Trump voters. For those Trump voters bothered by this racism, I hope they will speak out against it. It could help increase civility in the U.S."

A nation divided

Increased political polarization is part of what moves hate from the margins to the mainstream, Greenblatt said. Sentiments once considered extreme become validated and "people feel the pain of prejudice in a manner that is really beneath our values as a country," he said.

"I don't think either side of the ideological spectrum is exempt from intolerance," Greenblatt said. "Whether it's the U.S. president, or a university president ... I think we should expect our leaders to stand up and speak out against manifestations of hate."

And the rest of us? We remain where we always have, Greenblatt said, capable of moving the country away from cruelty and toward greater justice.

When the approximately 50 KKK members converged on Charlottesville this weekend to protest what Klan member James Moore called “the ongoing cultural genocide ... of white Americans," more than a thousand counterprotesters showed up to decry hate in their city. The Klan members were heavily outnumbered, chants of "white power" drowned out by "racists go home."

"I think all of us have an obligation to interrupt intolerance when it happens and to be an ally when we see others being subjected to harassment and hate," Greenblatt said. "We owe it to ourselves to make sure we call upon our better angels when we see people that we know, or don't know, who are being treated unfairly because of how they look or how they pray or who they love. Every one of us is capable of rising to that occasion."

KALKASKA, Mich. — A village president in northern Michigan is refusing to apologize for sharing Facebook posts denouncing Islam and calling for the killing of “every last Muslim.”

The Record-Eagle of Traverse City reports that Kalkaska Village President Jeff Sieting said Monday that he doesn’t owe anyone an apology over his Facebook posts. Kalkaska is about 230 miles northwest of Detroit.

The posts were discovered by area native Cindy Anderson, who along with others unsuccessfully sought an apology last month. They’re now looking to remove Sieting from office.

One post Sieting shared said Muslims are destructive and “there is simply no place for them in our world.”

Sieting says his comments are protected by the First Amendment and that those trying to oust him from office are only doing so because they oppose President Donald Trump.

The president said law enforcement officers shouldn't protect suspects' heads when putting them into police cars.

WASHINGTON ― President Donald Trump received applause on Friday when he endorsed police brutality while delivering a speech to law enforcement officers on Long Island, New York.

The president suggested that officers should hit suspects’ heads on the doors of their police cars.

“When you see these towns and when you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, you just see them thrown in, rough, and I said, ‘Please don’t be too nice,’” Trump said.

“Like when you guys put somebody in the car and you’re protecting their head, you know, the way you put their hand over, like, don’t hit their head and they’ve just killed somebody, don’t hit their head, I said, ‘You can take the hand away, OK?’” he added.

Trump also made the dubious claim that laws were “horrendously stacked” against police officers and said he wants to change those laws.

“For years and years, [laws have] been made to protect the criminal,” Trump said. “Totally protect the criminal, not the officers. You do something wrong, you’re in more jeopardy than they are. These laws are stacked against you. We’re changing those laws.”

In his speech, Trump also said that police officers in many parts of the country couldn’t do their jobs because they had a “pathetic mayor” or a mayor “who doesn’t know what’s going on.” Those comments also received a lengthy applause.

“It’s sad, it’s sad. You look at what’s happening, and it’s sad,” Trump said. “We’re going to support you like you’ve never been supported before.”

Trump also spoke about violence in Chicago, which was a consistent theme of his speeches throughout the campaign and is a topic he has continued to reference during his presidency. Trump recalled speaking to an “impressive” and “rough cookie” police officer from Chicago, and said the officer had told him he could straighten out the city’s violence problem in a “couple of days” if he was given the authority.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Trump may not be getting along these days, but the two are on the same page when it comes to policing. Sessions has had the Justice Department pull back from “pattern or practice” investigations that look into widespread constitutional abuses in police departments.

Zeke Johnson, senior director of programs at Amnesty International USA, said Trump’s “inflammatory and hateful speech will only escalate tensions between police and communities,” putting both officers and civilians at risk.

“Police cannot treat every community like an invading army, and encouraging violence by police is irresponsible and reprehensible,” he said.

Vanita Gupta, who headed the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division under former President Barack Obama, said Trump’s remarks were “unconscionable” and undermined the positive efforts of local law enforcement to build up community trust.

“The president of the United States, standing before an audience of law enforcement officials, actively encouraged police violence,” Gupta said. “We call on the president to immediately and unequivocally condemn police brutality. We can all respect our law enforcement officers without sanctioning unjust and illegal behavior.”

Robert Driscoll, a former Justice Department Civil Rights Division official under the President George W. Bush administration, was also critical.

US President Donald Trump has suggested that some Muslims should be executed with bullets dipped in pig's blood, hours after a deadly terror attack in Barcelona, Spain.

"Study what General Pershing of the United States did to terrorists when caught," Trump tweeted Thursday afternoon. "There was no more Radical Islamic Terror for 35 years!"

Trump’s tweet referenced a dubious story about US Army General John Pershing’s handling of Muslim prisoners during the Moro Rebellion (1899–1913) in the Philippines. The rebellion was an armed conflict between Muslims and the United States military.

During the 2016 election campaign, Trump frequently told a tale of how Pershing had Moro Muslim prisoners in the Philippines executed with bullets soaked in pig's blood to quell rebellion against American rule.

Speaking at a rally in Charleston February last year, Trump said General Pershing “took 50 bullets and he dipped them in pig’s blood.”

“And he had his men load his rifles and he lined up the 50 people, and they shot 49 of those people. And the 50th person, he said, ‘You go back to your people and you tell them what happened.’ And for 25 years there wasn’t a problem,” he said.

According to some historians, Trump’s tale is false. They have concluded it would have been "out of character" for Pershing.

But some other historians have suggested that American troops did use pigs or pig's blood to intimidate Muslims during the Philippine conflict in the early 20th century.

"So yes, there were deliberate efforts to offend Muslim Filipinos' religious sensibilities," Christopher Capozzola, a history professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told TIME last year.

"And yes, there was large-scale violence against their communities. But I know of no event like the one that Mr. Trump describes,” he stated.

Muslim advocacy groups have challenged Trump to debate a representative from the American-Muslim community "on the issues" he has "raised about Islam and Muslims."

Earlier in the day, Trump condemned the attack in Barcelona. At least 13 people were killed and 80 were injured after a van plowed into a crowd in the Spanish city.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump raised eyebrows during a recent rally when he offered a counterinsurgency parable from more than a century ago that featured United States Army Gen. John Joseph "Black Jack" Pershing.

During a Feb. 19, 2016, rally in North Charleston, S.C., Trump referred to an anecdote from the aftermath of the Philippine-American War of 1899-1902, when the United States sought to exert its authority over the Asian archipelago, which it had recently obtained from Spain after winning the Spanish-American War.

After taking the reins of power from Spain, the United States faced armed opposition, and the three-year war led to the deaths of more than 4,200 American combatants, more than 20,000 Filipino combatants, and as many as 200,000 Filipino civilians, according to the State Department.

After the war, Pershing served as governor of the heavily Muslim Moro Province between 1909 and 1913. This period was notable for its continuing insurgencies.

"They were having terrorism problems, just like we do," Trump said, according to an account in the Washington Post. "And he caught 50 terrorists who did tremendous damage and killed many people. And he took the 50 terrorists, and he took 50 men and he dipped 50 bullets in pigs’ blood — you heard that, right? He took 50 bullets, and he dipped them in pigs’ blood. And he had his men load his rifles, and he lined up the 50 people, and they shot 49 of those people. And the 50th person, he said: You go back to your people, and you tell them what happened. And for 25 years, there wasn’t a problem. Okay? Twenty-five years, there wasn’t a problem."

After Trump told this story, critics called it apocryphal, misleading or outright false. Our friends at Snopes.com considered the evidence and called it a "legend."

We decided to check with historians of the period to see what they thought of the story. We heard back from eight scholars. Most expressed skepticism that the specific story ever happened, and many added that Trump’s takeaway is wrong-headed. We’ll take a look at those two concerns separately below.
Did it happen?

The idea that pig’s blood could serve as a weapon against Muslims has been around in popular culture for decades.

For instance, a 1939 Hollywood movie, The Real Glory, stars Gary Cooper as a doctor on the Philippine island of Mindanao who drapes a captive in pigskin "to serve as an abject lesson to all would-be attackers," Luis H. Francia, a Filipino-born professor of Asian American Studies at Hunter College, wrote recently.

Snopes has been tracking Internet-based rumors of this sort since 2001, and a California National Guard facility removed a poster telling the Pershing story in 2005.

But the only historical evidence that something like this actually happened appears to come from a letter written by a soldier who served in the Philippines.

"Mr. C.C. Booth of Dallas, Texas, who served in Mindanao under Pershing, recalls seeing him hang a Moro chieftain by the heels over an open grave, kill a pig, and then drop the Moro into the grave with the bloody animal," according to a 1962 article by Donald Smythe in the Pacific Historical Review, an academic journal.

However, David J. Silbey, a Cornell University historian and author of A War of Frontier and Empire: The Philippine-American War, 1899-1902, raised red flags about its sourcing. This claim came from one letter -- and one that was written in 1960, more than half a century after the events in question. (And for the sake of this fact-check, the details differ significantly from the story Trump told.)

Other historians agreed that the evidence is thin, to say the least.

"This story is a fabrication and has long been discredited," said Brian McAllister Linn, a Texas A&M University historian and author of Guardians of Empire: The U.S. Army and the Pacific, 1902-1940. "I am amazed it is still making the rounds."

Christopher Einolf, a professor at DePaul University and author of America in the Philippines, 1899-1902: The First Torture Scandal, added that he trusted the conclusion of the late military historian Frank E. Vandiver, who told About.com in 2003 that "I never found any indication that it was true in extensive research on his Moro experiences. This kind of thing would have run completely against his character."

Indeed, other historians noted that Pershing pursued a less brutal approach to "pacifying" the rebels in the southern Philippines than Leonard Wood, one of his predecessors.

"He did a lot of what we would call ‘winning hearts and minds’ and embraced reforms which helped end their resistance," said Lance Janda, a military historian at Cameron University. "He fought too, but only when he had to, and only against tribes or bands that just wouldn’t negotiate with him. He wasn’t solely committed to fighting as people like Trump who tell the pig blood story imply."

Another wrinkle: Historians said the premise that the rebels would have been motivated by a fear of pigs is not as certain as Trump suggests. It’s unclear how religiously observant the insurgents were and whether such a policy would have made a difference in their actions.

"The Moros were fighting for a lot of reasons, not just because they were Muslims," Janda said. "This is another fact that gets lost in many modern discussions of terrorism."

Facts aside, Trump’s larger point is wrong

To many of the historians we checked with, the idea that Pershing’s hypothetical blood-dipped bullets pacified "terrorists" is actually the bigger problem with Trump’s parable.

"Even if the tale is true, the pacifying effect that Trump claims is nonsense," said Michael H. Hunt, an emeritus historian at the University of North Carolina and author of Arc of Empire: America's Wars in Asia from the Philippines to Vietnam. The region "remained in constant unrest during the period of American rule and into the period of independence, right down to the present."

Silbey of Cornell agreed. "Where Trump’s remark becomes ridiculous is in the idea that this actually worked," he said. "The Moro War did not end until 1913, and even that’s a bit of a soft date, with violence continuing for quite a while afterward. Defilement by pig’s blood isn’t -- and wasn’t -- some magical method of ending terrorism."

If anything, a more complete account of the Moro insurgency involves some subplots that run contrary to Trump’s narrative.

"The Ottomans under Sultan Abdul Hamid II sent a letter to the Sulu Moros asking them not to resist the Americans at the start of the Moro Rebellion, and the Moros on Sulu complied," Janda said. "It’s a nice example of diplomacy working to our advantage, and a reminder that then and now, not all Muslims or Moros are the same and that many were and are U.S. allies."

Our ruling

Of the eight historians we checked with, all were at least skeptical that what Trump said actually happened, and some expressed disbelief even more forcefully than that. The only evidence of something approximating what Trump said stems from one letter documenting a different scenario written by a veteran more than a half century after the fact.

Perhaps more important, the historians took issue with Trump’s suggestion that the tactic -- if it was even used at all -- actually worked to end tensions, noting that unrest persisted for years. In all, Trump’s claim is ridiculous, so we rate it Pants on Fire.

UPDATE, Feb. 29, 2016: After we published this story, a reader pointed us to a memoir by Pershing titled My Life Before the World War, 1860-1917, which was republished in 2013 by the University Press of Kentucky. In the memoir, Pershing writes that another commanding officer in the Philippines, Col. Frank West, had in at least one case seen to it that bodies of Muslim insurgents "were publicly buried in the same grave with a dead pig. It was not pleasant to have to take such measures, but the prospect of going to hell instead of heaven sometimes deterred the would-be assassins."

In a footnote, the editor of the 2013 edition, John T. Greenwood, cited a letter about the incident from Maj. Gen. J. Franklin Bell, the commander of the Philippines Division, to Pershing: "Of course there is nothing to be done, but I understand it has long been a custom to bury (insurgents) with pigs when they kill Americans. I think this a good plan, for if anything will discourage the (insurgents) it is the prospect of going to hell instead of to heaven. You can rely on me to stand by you in maintaining this custom. It is the only possible thing we can do to discourage crazy fanatics."

While these writings do provide strong evidence that United States forces used pigs as a tactic against Muslim insurgents, they do not support the claim Trump made. There is no evidence that Pershing himself committed these acts, there is nothing said about the use of 50 bullets dipped in pig’s blood, and most important, there is no evidence to support Trump’s claim that this tactic was effective in stopping violence -- or that it would provide a useful policy today.

When we ran this additional information by three of the historians we checked with for our original story -- Silbey, Linn and Janda -- they told us they agreed with our conclusion. Our rating remains Pants on Fire.

Donald Trump Has Been a Racist All His Life — And He Isn’t Going to Change After Charlottesville

8.15.17

“Racism is evil,” declared Donald Trump on Monday, “and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.”
OK, “declared” may be too strong a word for what we heard from the president. “Stated” is perhaps a better descriptor. “Read out” might be the most accurate of all. Trump made these “additional remarks” with great reluctance and only after two days of intense criticism from both the media and senior Republicans over his original remarks blaming “many sides” for the neo-Nazi violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. The words were not his own: they were scripted by aides and delivered with the assistance of a teleprompter. The president reserved his personal, off-the-cuff ire on Monday for the black CEO of Merck, not for the white fascists of Virginia.

Much of the frenzied media coverage of what CNN dubbed “48 hours of turmoil for the Trump White House” has overlooked one rather crucial point: Trump doesn’t like being forced to denounce racism for the very simple reason that he himself is, and always has been, a racist.

Consider the first time the president’s name appeared on the front page of the New York Times, more than 40 years ago. “Major Landlord Accused of Antiblack Bias in City,” read the headline of the A1 piece on Oct. 16, 1973, which pointed out how Richard Nixon’s Department of Justice had sued the Trump family’s real estate company in federal court over alleged violations of the Fair Housing Act.

“The government contended that Trump Management had refused to rent or negotiate rentals ‘because of race and color,’” the Times revealed. “It also charged that the company had required different rental terms and conditions because of race and that it had misrepresented to blacks that apartments were not available.” (Trump later settled with the government without accepting responsibility.)

Some had hoped that Trump would be moderated by office; there was much talk of a presidential pivot. It was all utter nonsense and wishful thinking from lazy commentators who have found it difficult to cover, and call out, a president who regularly traffics in racially charged rhetoric while surrounding himself with an array of race-baiting advisers. Since entering the Oval Office, Trump has appointed Steve Bannon — former executive chairman of Breitbart News, which has stories tagged ‘Black Crime’ — as his White House chief strategist, and Jeff Sessions — who was once accused of calling a black official in Alabama a “nigger” — as his attorney general; he has claimed, without a shred of evidence, that millions of immigrants “voted illegally” for Hillary Clinton; and, perhaps most shocking of all, he has publicly and repeatedly belittled Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who has claimed Native American heritage, as “Pocahontas.”

This is Racism 101 from a sitting U.S. president. And it is the stark and undeniable truth, and key context, that is missing from much of the coverage of the political fallout from Charlottesville. Journalists, opinion formers, members of Congress, and members of the public continue to treat Trump as they would any previous president — they expect their head of government to come out and condemn racism with passion, vigor, speed, and sincerity. But what do you do if the president is himself a long-standing purveyor of racism and xenophobia? What then? Do you still demand he condemn and castigate what is essentially his base? Do you continue to feign shock and outrage over his lack of shock and outrage?

Yes, the U.S. has had plenty of presidents in recent decades who have dog-whistled to racists and bigots, and even incited hate against minorities — think Nixon’s Southern Strategy, Reagan and his “welfare queens,” George H.W. Bush and the Willie Horton ad, and the Clintons and their “super-predators” — but there has never been a modern president so personally steeped in racist prejudices, so unashamed to make bigoted remarks in public and with such a long and well-documented record of racial discrimination.

So can we stop playing this game where journalists demand Trump condemns people he agrees with and Trump then pretends to condemn them in the mildest of terms? I hate to say this, but it is worth paying attention to the leader of the Virginia KKK, who told a reporter in August 2016: “The reason a lot of Klan members like Donald Trump is because a lot of what he believes, we believe in.”

So can we stop pretending that Trump isn’t Trump? That the presidency has changed him, or will change him? It hasn’t and it won’t. There will be no reset; no reboot; no pivot. This president may now be going through the motions of (belatedly) denouncing racism, with his scripted statements and vacuous tweets. But here’s the thing: why would you expect a lifelong racist to want to condemn or crack down on other racists? Why assume a person whose entire life and career has been defined by racially motivated prejudice and racial discrimination, by hostility toward immigrants, foreigners, and minorities, would suddenly be concerned by the rise of prejudice and discrimination on his watch? It is pure fantasy for politicians and pundits to suppose that Trump will ever think or behave as anything other than the bigot he has always been — and, in more recent years, as an apologist for other bigots, too.

We would do well to heed the words of those who have spent decades studying this bizarre president. “Donald is a 70-year-old man,” Trump biographer David Cay Johnston reminded me in the run-up to his inauguration in January. “I’m 67. I’m not going to change and neither is Donald.”

Trump's claim that a general dipped bullets in pigs' blood is fake news – but the US massacre of Moro Muslims isn't

Pershing had left the islands and the Philippine-US war was officially over when the Americans slaughtered the Moro Muslims in their hundreds – men, women and children. With Trump-like enthusiasm, Republican President Theodore Roosevelt congratulated the US commanders on their 'brilliant feat of arms'

8.18.17

I don’t know what the people of Barcelona think about Trump’s demented and repulsive tale of bullets and pig’s blood – but I know what Mark Twain would have said. He was the finest American political writer of his time – perhaps of all time – and he wrote with bitterness, sarcasm and disgust about the US military’s war crimes in the Philippines in 1906. No doubt Trump would have approved of them.

As so often, there’s no proof – and thus no truth – to the story that General Pershing ever told his soldiers to execute Filipino fighters with bullets dipped in pigs’ blood. Besides, Pershing had left the islands and the Philippine-US war was officially over when the Americans slaughtered the Moro Muslims in their hundreds – men, women and children – in what became known as the Battle of Bud Dajo. With Trump-like enthusiasm, Republican President Theodore Roosevelt congratulated the US commanders on their “brilliant feat of arms”.

Twain – Samuel Clemens, to use his real name – thought differently. The American military had brutally crushed an uprising by the ethnic Muslim Moro people, a final and hopeless battle in the Philippine war of independence against the United States. It is a tale not without significance in any study of America’s recent occupation of both Afghanistan and Iraq.

He wrote a deeply cynical essay about the “battle” of Bud Dajo a few days later. Up to 1,000 Moro men, women and children were killed by US forces who had surrounded them in their mountain refuge 2,200 feet above sea level, a volcanic crater in which all but six of the Muslims were killed. A surviving photograph of the atrocity shows uniformed US troops standing above piles of corpses, one of them a bare-breasted woman.

“With 600 engaged on each side,” Twain wrote, “we lost 15 men killed outright, and we had 32 wounded … The enemy numbered 600 – including women and children – and we abolished them utterly, leaving not even a baby alive to cry for its dead mother. This is incomparably the greatest victory that was ever achieved by the Christian soldiers of the United States … The splendid news appeared with splendid display – heads in every newspaper in this city … But there was not a single reference to it in the editorial columns of any one of those newspapers.”

Twain observed that not one reader wrote to support the US “victory”. But President Theodore Roosevelt sent his congratulations to the US Commander, Major General Leonard Wood, in Manila: “I congratulate you and the officers and men of your command upon the brilliant feat of arms wherein you and they so well upheld the honour of the American flag.”

Twain recorded the headlines over the following days – “Women Slain in Moro Massacre”, “With Children They Mixed in Mob in Crater, and All Died Together”, “Death List is Now 900”, “Impossible to Tell Sexes Apart in Fierce Battle on Top of Mount Dajo” – and remarked that “the naked savages were so far away, down in the bottom of that trap, that our soldiers could not tell the breasts of a woman from the rudimentary paps of a man – so far away that they couldn’t tell a toddling child from a black six-footer.” A headline announcing “Lieutenant Johnson Blown from Parapet by Exploding Artillery Gallantly Leading Charge” convinced Twain that the soldier must have been wounded by his own side – since the Moros had no artillery.

But he shrewdly noted that Johnson had been a member of the volunteer “Rough Riders” unit raised to fight in the Spanish-American war – the conflict which gave the US possession of the Philippines – and commanded by the same Major General Wood who oversaw the massacre in 1906. Wood’s second-in-command was the same Theodore Roosevelt who was now President. No wonder Roosevelt cabled his wounded men: “How are you?” Johnson replied: “Fine, thanks.” This, Twain cynically observed, “is historical. This will go down to posterity.”

Twain described a subsequent luncheon party at which his wealthy publisher George Harvey, a Democrat who supported Woodrow Wilson, “said he believed that the shock and shame of this episode would eat down deeper and deeper into the hearts of the nation and fester there and produce results … I cannot believe that the prediction will come true, for the reason that prophecies which promise valuable things, desirable things, good things, worthy things, never come true. Prophecies of this kind are like wars fought in a good cause – they are so rare that they don’t count.”

The Moro massacre was initially, as Twain predicted, a public relations disaster. It could not be regarded as “a brilliant feat of arms”, even “if Christian America, represented by its salaried soldiers, had shot them down with Bibles … instead of bullets.”

Later accounts of the mass killings – readers must keep a straight face when they remember more recent quotations of this kind – claimed that the Moro women had been used as human shields by the men in the crowd and were thus what we would today call “collateral damage”. US troops wrote home about other atrocities in the Philippines, including the torching of villages and the killing of their occupants. A form of water torture was also used to extract information during the eight-year anti-independence campaign.

The Philippines was the first imperial war fought by the United States – it never claimed possession of Korea or Vietnam, even of Japan after the Second World War – and the pattern of “shock and awe” inflicted on the Moro people was to be repeated, as we know, in the Middle East.

The Moro Muslims were a minority among the country’s then more than 80 per cent Christian Catholic population. But well over a century after general Wood’s killings in the volcano, his military descendants have “assisted” the Philippine government in its battle against Muslim insurgents from – and readers may have guessed the identity – the Moro Liberation Front.

The Philippines’ current president Rodrigo Duterte, who has several times used the 1906 slaughter of the Moros to condemn America, is now using his police death squads to kill thousands in his “war on drugs”. Trump has said that Duterte is doing an “unbelievable job”. Kind of important, I guess, to remember the facts of history – even if Trump gets them all wrong.

'There should be no place in the world for racist white supremacist ideas or any similar ideologies'

The United Nations has criticised Donald Trump for failing to "unequivocally and unconditionally reject and condemn racist hate speech and crimes in Charlottesville" and throughout the US.

“There should be no place in the world for racist white supremacist ideas or any similar ideologies that reject the core human rights principles of human dignity and equality," the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination said.

While the committee's statement stopped short of criticising the US President by name, it said it was calling on the US Government, as well as high-level politicians and public officials, “to address the root causes of the proliferation of such racist manifestations.”

Mr Trump revved up supporters in Phoenix on Tuesday with a defence of his response to a white supremacist-organised rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

He accused the "fake media" of misrepresenting his "perfect" response to the protests and counter-protests, before reading out portions of his various statements on Charlottesville - neglecting to read his most controversial comments, in which he said there was blame for the violence "on all sides."

She added: “We call on the US Government to investigate thoroughly the phenomenon of racial discrimination targeting, in particular, people of African descent, ethnic or ethno-religious minorities, and migrants."

Under its "early warning and urgent action" procedure, the committee also called on the US to ensure the rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly are "not exercised with the aim of destroying or denying the rights and freedoms of others."

It asked the US government to provide guarantees such rights are not misused to promote racist hate speech and racist crimes.

Donald Trump has exposed the seminal myth of American democracy - that it enjoys an inherent immunity from fascism.

All along, the truth was there - plain and neon-bright - for those willing to see and accept.

The truth, of course, is that Donald Trump doesn't simply "flirt" with fascism at the margins, but embraces it not only rhetorically, but as the governing ethos of his perverse regime.

A coterie of writers and historians has long understood that Trump is indeed a fascist, while the centrist-hugging commentariat vacillated and quibbled about whether he is or isn't.

Not burdened by such equivocating sensibilities, other, more astute observers, instantly recognised a profoundly hazardous man who, on the incessant, winding road to the White House - wittingly or unwittingly - channelled the spirit, words and deeds of his avowedly fascist American political and cultural ancestors, including the prewar evangelical anti-Semitic huckster, Father Charles Coughlin; the rabid 1950s Communist-hunting Congressman, Joseph McCarthy; and the slick, 1960s segregationist Alabama governor, George Wallace.

Like Trump, each of these fanatics - separated only by a few generations - attracted a legion of equally fanatical followers who converted popular support into great power and influence, which not only emboldened them, but also fuelled resistance to their odious racial edicts and modus vivendi.

Cloaked in Roman Catholic vestments and scripture, Coughlin's blatant racism and anti-Semitism had the patina of profundity and eloquence that Trump's spontaneous, sputtering expressions of white, Christian nationalism lack.
Still, beyond history, what binds these intolerant charlatans is the conviction that young, torch-wielding anti-Semites - wearing brown or polo shirts - are patriots who warrant approbation, not condemnation.

Like McCarthy, Trump claims crudely that America is infected by a lengthy list of concocted enemies who allegedly pose an existential threat to its exceptionalism and patrimonial purity.

Trump's malignant ledger extends from Mexican "rapists", terror-prone Muslim fifth columnists to "sick" journalists that he alone is determined to root out and vanquish to restore America's faltering "greatness".

This same messianic impulse to defend besieged white America from the insidious "others" inside or outside its geographic and ancestral borders, prompted Governor Wallace to declare: "in the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth … I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever" and personally block an entrance to the University of Alabama in a futile, but symbolically charged bid to bar black students from attending.

(Buoyed by his popularity, Wallace also ran for president several times, before denouncing segregation on the eve of his death.)

It's unlikely that Trump will ever experience a similar transformative epiphany since he, and the foaming acolytes who populate his hysterically reactionary administration, have, in effect, not only appropriated and resurrected Wallace's bigoted epitaph, but consider it a political imperative to assuage their feverishly xenophobic "base".

Every instructive measure of this sordid American history was, as I said, apparent long before Trump assumed the presidency. Trump's brand of fascism pilfered from the not-so-distant past and was refashioned for broadcast on modern, establishment media that treated the brash, ubiquitous, reality star as an entertaining, harmless diversion.
The nadir of this revolting coddling of America's latest and most egregious incarnation of fascism was, I suppose, late-night talk-show host Jimmy Fallon's memorable appeasement of a celebrity fascist, which culminated in his tussling of Trump's orange mane on national TV just weeks prior to the presidential election.

Fallon was not alone. Far too many others were prepared to play along - figuratively and literally - with the menace from Manhattan. Still more learned types dismissed the use of the blunt, sharp word fascism in the context of Trump's ascendancy as a facile simplification, as well as an irresponsible, hyperbolic "label" that did a disservice to the victims of "real" fascism.

The hesitancy and semantic evasions quickly evaporated after a young, courageous woman didn't debate competing interpretations of who or what constitutes a fascist, but chose instead to confront the army of fascists who descended on Charlottesville, Virginia earlier this month to raise their arms in Neo-Nazi salutes and pledge "blood and soil" allegiance to their philosophical leader, Donald Trump.

Heather Heyer was murdered by one of the loathsome locust of fascists who were, as we know, defended as "very fine people" by a president who re-confirmed his well-established white supremacist credentials in the immediate aftermath of her horrific death and has, since then, reiterated repeatedly in appalling, unambiguous language that he would gladly walk among them, tiki-torch and hateful vitriol readily at hand.

Remember too, the exculpatory line proffered by journalists and politicians who insisted that Trump's initial appeal and subsequent electoral success had more to do with rampant "economic anxiety", rather than his rampant racism.
That canard was exposed emphatically by a recent poll (pdf) that found that nine percent of respondents - the equivalent of 22 million Americans - believe that holding Neo-Nazi or white supremacist views is "acceptable". A slightly higher number acknowledged supporting rancid racists - euphemistically dubbed the "alt-right".

So, if accurate, the poll suggests that, taken together, more than 50 million Americans have sympathy for Neo-Nazis and their ideological spawn.

The prevailing wisdom is that Trump has not only defamed American democracy, but bit by abominable bit, eroded the legitimacy of American democracy - perhaps beyond repair.

This cockeyed reasoning fails to acknowledge that Trump is not a historical outlier. His fascistic nature - which has been on routine and undeniable display - is not a new or surprising phenomenon, nor is the nationwide succour it attracts.

Today, American fascism has finally taken up residence in the Oval Office. Arguably, this sinister reality is a natural, inevitable consequence of America's foul, decidedly less mythical, and deeply entrenched past.

To be sure, as before, millions of enlightened Americans are repulsed by what they've seen, heard and experienced and are resisting in small and large ways - despite the often violent, sometimes deadly retribution exacted by Trump's thuggish torch bearers, incited by their thuggish commander-in-chief.

By pardoning fellow "birther" conspiracy theorist and disgraced former Arizona sheriff, Joe Arpaio- who was convicted in July of contempt of court for defying a judge's order to stop racially profiling Latinos - Trump has, true to his autocratic nature, rendered the rule of law hostage to his mercurial and arbitrary whims, while signaling to other racist, judicial-snubbing police, that he approves of their repugnant ways and means.

In so doing, Trump has exposed the seminal myth of American democracy - that it enjoys an inherent and rebar-sturdy immunity from fascism and the strongmen who personify it. Wrong. Fascism can and is happening in America, just as it has always been alive in America.

Although Trevor Noah brings a certain comedic freshness to The Daily Show, he often says things that are right on point. Recently, he stated that Trump is every negative stereotype people thought a Black president would be.

08/01/2017

As you know by now, Donald Trump exhibits zero professionalism in his office as United States president. And Trevor points out a few of those faults in his recent "Between the Scenes" segment.

First during the segment, Noah discussed Trump's amateur tardiness when it comes to press conferences and meetings.

While everyone joked about President Obama possibly being late due to "CPT," it seems that Trump is the one consistently running on that schedule.

On another topic, Trevor talks about Trump making the White House into an extended family compound. He's appointed various members of his family as "advisers."

It's more like he's trying to turn his term into a dynasty rather than a run it as a presidency. Smh.

Then too, Trevor points out the fact that Trump loves fried chicken. All of these "Black" stereotypes are played out every day by Trump.

Likewise, he's always running off at the mouth - via Twitter anyway, not to say Blacks are always mouthing off.

So, he's everything Conservatives joked about during Obama's time in office. Yet, Barack showed none of those characteristics.

He was insanely punctual. He was diplomatic. He had a moral compass. He honored his family. And he remained scandal-free for the length of his presidency.

Donald AND Ivanka had scandals in place during the campaign! They weren't even in office yet.

Anyway, regarding Trump, Trevor Noah definitely hit the nail on the head with precision.